A new game came to Xbox Series X today, and in addition to being available for purchase on the Microsoft Store, it is available via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass Premium as a day-one game, saving subscribers from a $20 purchase. In addition to being available to subscribers on Xbox Series X, it is also available to subscribers on PC, but it’s not new on PC. The game in question has been available on PC since last year, and PC users have loved it.
The new Xbox Game Pass day one game in question has an 82 on Metacritic, which is a very solid score, but its audience score demolishes this. To this end, on Steam, where it has been available since August 2025, Tiny Bookshop from developer Neoludic Games and publishers Skystone Games and 2P Games, has a 96% rating across 4,296 user reviews. This is one of the highest audience scores of any game currently available via any tier of Xbox Game Pass across any platform. Whether it will resonate with Xbox users as much remains to be seen, as the Microsoft Store doesn’t permit user reviews for brand-new releases.
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2025 Fan-Favorite Game
As you can tell from the trailer above, Tiny Bookshop is a cozy, artsy narrative management game, and it is the debut release from Neoludic Games. In it, you leave your previous life behind to open up a tiny second-hand bookshop near the sea. Your job is to stock your shelves, set up shop around town in scenic locations where locals congregate, and then interact with said locals, your customers.
While the game’s $20 price tag may suggest it’s on the shorter side, it isn’t. At the bare minimum, Xbox Game Pass subscribers will need to prepare for 15 hours with the cozy game to beat it. Add in side content, and the game is more like 20 hours long. And then completionists will need to tack on an additional 10 hours to this. Meanwhile, as long as Tiny Bookshop is available via the subscription service, subscribers can purchase the game outright with an exclsuive 20% discount, saving $4 in the process. How long the game is going to be available via the subscription service, though, we do not know. Typically, games are added in 6-month, 12-month, or 24-month chunks. The 12-month contract is especially common.
All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the conversations happening over on the ComicBook Forum.